Edward De Lee

Management (Sunway) | Year 2 | Degree: Bachelor of Science (Hons) Business Management

The Untold stories of Followers

The problem of the research problem is that society is over-valuing leadership over followership. This topic is necessary because society as a whole has placed an overemphasis on leadership, denying the importance of followership. A quick google search of leaders vs followers is of a huge discrepancy by 80:1, over the last 5 years. This has skewed the definition of what great leadership incorporates. This problem is further compounded by the fact that Malaysia ranks #104 on Hofstedes’ Power Index. This in fact, breeds ‘yes-man’, which are subordinates, completing tasks as they are told.
The purpose of this study is to understand the underlying issues of how we as a society view leadership and what are the measures against it. Conclusion: At the end of my study, there was no way of ascertaining the right solution. As leadership is a social issue, there is no direct metrics to calculate the effectiveness of a leader, only suggestions that contribute to his leadership. However, the theory of Intelligent Disobedience written by Ira Challeff, has been proposed to combat the effects of ‘yes-man’.

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Edward De Lee

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Edward De Lee

Management (Sunway) | Year 2 | Degree: Bachelor of Science (Hons) Business Management

The Untold stories of Followers

‘A leader is born not made. This sentiment has been controversially dated to the 1800s when the leaders at that time attempted to indoctrinate the idea of superiority amongst followers. A special pass at birth. Consequently, praising charisma is the main attribute of a successful leader. Much has changed since then, with newer theories of servant leadership and more popularly followership, which decentralizes power at the top and spreads downwards. This begs the question as to why was a leader-centric model was the de facto and not vice-versa?

The answer is charisma.

Charismatic leadership grows from personal magnetism that inspires passion amongst followers.

Popper, M. (2012) argues that humans innately crave leaders in their lives. More specifically they crave a ‘father figure’. During a time of crisis, the dormant construct of ‘security’ often awakens in the form of the father figure’. Much like how Hitler exalted a father figure, that search for a parental figure was further compounded by the fact that the Germans were stripped of their military might, on top of prejudiced government at that time. This made it easier for the German population to dump their trust in Hitler to fix the concurrent issues of a weakened country as a whole, compared to questioning/rationalizing the ethics of his propaganda, during his rise.

As Khurana suggests that this trend towards hiring ‘charismatic’ individuals may explain the detriments of a firm’s hardships. Take, for example, the establishment of Armstrong into AT&T’s stock has skyrocketed to $4 billion, with his first act as a celebrity CEO, his aggressive acquisition of cable TV, and Internet delivery systems, has tanked. From $ 64 per stock, it sells at a major loss of $10 per share. This shows to say that charisma and rationality cannot coincide. Unfortunately, why do we choose the former?

We crave savior.

Hitler was a father figure.

What is followership? It is to be effective followers, with their team’s purpose above their personal agenda. Ira Chaleff explains it clearly that it is the purpose of the team, that links followers and its leaders, not titles or hierarchy, that is merely a social construct of authority in a work environment. In Courageous Followers, the idea of followership and leadership is one that alludes to followers being the listener and leaders being the speakers. A speaker is only present when there are listeners, any lesser of a listener, the speaker is merely an announcer.

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